This article originally appeared at LobeLog, just a few hours after the Iran nuclear interim agreement was announced.

Catherine Ashton and Mohammed Zarif at the UN in September

These are my initial thoughts on the deal struck between the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) and Iran. They come after a few hours of watching the speeches, reading the briefings from the US State Department and the White House and some heavy-duty work on Twitter, both reading and writing (check my feed at @MJPlitnick if you’d like to see some of it).

1. There are going to be tough political battles in both Washington and Tehran. But the reality is that pretty much everything the P5+1 has granted can be reversed at the figurative snap of a finger. If Iran dilutes or converts all of its 20% enriched stockpile, it will take time to build that back up. From the point of view of a hardliner in Iran, when that point is combined with the complete halt to work at Arak, the total halt to enrichment above 5%, the freeze on new centrifuges and limits on replacement and the earlier agreement Iran struck with the IAEA (which happened outside of the Geneva process, so there was no quid pro quo), this is a very long list of concessions. In exchange, Iran gets only minor sanctions relief, potentially worth as much as only $7 billion and an agreement that the West will leave the limit on Iran’s oil revenue where it is. (more…)

The new nuclear talks with Iran seem to be reflecting a new direction for the Islamic Republic under Hassan Rowhani and a new openness from the US and Europe to a reasonable compromise. The unhappy parties are Israel and Saudi Arabia, but at least for now, they are not able to scuttle the hope for a resolution. Some of what this theater demonstrates is the obvious fact to anyone who has been paying attention for the past fifteen years: the entire issue of an Iranian bomb has been phony. I explain this week in Souciant.

This piece was initially published at LobeLog. Please check it out, as it’s an indispensable source for foreign policy news and analysis. You won’t regret it!

The annual Israel-Congress orgy dubbed as the AIPAC Policy Conference kicked off today. It might just as well be called the War on Iran conference — that’s sure to be the

President Obama speaking at a previous AIPAC conference, He won’t be there this year.

issue that dominates the proceedings. The US-Israel relationship is taking the second spot. And the Palestinians? More than ever before, they will be invisible.

There are a few sessions at the conference that deal with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in very general terms. But Iran will be the focus, as evidenced by related bills which AIPAC had some of its most loyal members of Congress introduce in advance of their lobbying day. Those bills work to give Israel a green light to attack Iran if it feels the need to and puts the “special relationship” between the US and Israel on paper.

Last week a Senate resolution was introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ). The two senators are widely known as AIPAC favorites and have led bipartisan actions like this in the past, working with AIPAC quite closely to develop legislation favorable to the lobbying organization. The resolution states that if Israel decides to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon, this would be considered an act of self-defense and that “…the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel…”

The bill is a “sense of Congress” resolution, so it is not binding; hence the word “should” rather than “will” is used. Still, it is a very clear expression that the Senate expects and desires that President Obama provide a full range of support to Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran. It certainly sends a signal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will have Congress behind him if Obama tries to restrain Israel from taking such a step. While the bill’s wording clarifies that it should not be understood as a declaration of war in the event of an Israeli attack, a commitment to military support of Israel in the event of a purely Israeli decision to attack Iran could well amount to the same thing. (more…)

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